One challenge in diagnosing and treating internal areas of a subject's body has been adequately visualizing those internal areas. Visualization may be difficult to achieve in minimally invasive procedures, where elongated instruments with small diameters may be navigated through openings, passageways, and cavities of a subject's body, to access internal areas therein. Those elongated small-diameter instruments may include, for example, catheters or endoscopes.
Ureteroscopy is a procedure that may be performed to diagnose and treat urinary tract diseases and ureteral strictures. A ureteroscope may be inserted retrograde through the urinary tract to allow diagnosis and treatment of the urinary tract under visualization. During a ureteroscopy procedure, a viewing window, port, or lens of the ureteroscope may become obstructed with blood, tissue, fluids, and other materials within the body, or may become fogged over with condensation such that it prevents a medical professional from clearly viewing the body lumen and/or a medical tool extended through the ureteroscope. In addition, the area of interest within the body of the patient may become difficult to view due to blood and other debris that may collect within the area of interest. Further, the area of interest may be narrow and difficult to maneuver within. Dilation of the area of interest (e.g., via irrigation fluid) may be necessary to improve maneuverability within the area of interest.
In order to clean the lens, a medical professional may remove the ureteroscope from the body and manually wipe or otherwise remove debris or condensation. However, the need to withdraw the viewing ureteroscope from the patient, clean it, reinsert it, and reposition it, is highly inefficient and inconvenient. Alternatively, some ureteroscopes may be coupled with an irrigation supply line and a distal port to inject irrigation fluid across the lens to clear debris or condensation. If the medical professional determines there is a need to inject irrigation fluid, such as a need to clear the area of interest and/or a viewing lens of the ureteroscope or a need to dilate the area of interest, he or she is left to either remove one of his or her hands from the ureteroscope or the medical tool extending through the ureteroscope to actuate a fluid pump, or direct an assistant to actuate a fluid pump. However, removing one of their hands may result in losing a particular positioning of the ureteroscope and/or tool within the body and decrease procedural efficiency. On the other hand, if the medical professional opts to instruct an assistant to actuate a fluid pump, communication between the medical professional and assistant must be exact and clear, otherwise, the assistant may inadvertently inject too much or too little irrigation fluid, which may inhibit procedural efficiency.
The systems and methods of the current disclosure may rectify some of the deficiencies described above.